A Deluge of Dissapointments

A Bit Too Real?

So, the game was real. Right down to the bone. Unfortunately, one of the things that's nice about real cars is that they don't handle like RC cars. It's nice to be able to shove people around, to have a car that can maintain control going around a turn, etc. RC cars may be nice for little kids who can't drive, but they pale in comparison to the real thing, even the real thing simulated on a computer.

Leavin' rubber

What goes up . . .

Unfortunately, not many of us get the opportunity to streak down a race track at 100mph. That's where RC comes in, and the amazing attention to detail and tweakability can make up for the lack of an ominous engine rumble. Re-Volt keeps all of its car configurations and physics variables in a text file, which at the moment can be edited to your liking. This makes for an incredible amount of fine tuning, but may be a little difficult for the neophyte config customizer.

Oooh, nice carpet

Hum-Vee meets Arboretum

Because the cars are so realistically difficult to handle, Re-Volt as it stands is an obnoxiously difficult game. This reviewer, an avid racer, spent a good three hours trying to beat the first track of the first championship circuit, to no avail. This is due to a lot of factors, and I'm hoping that the game will be toned down a bit by time of release. In my on-going efforts to play god, here are a list of changes which I'd like to see.

Nice foliage

More foliage

• The powerups have a lot sway in the race. Pick up a bomb (an evil powerup that will blow you up if you don't pass it off to another player before the fuse runs out), and you could go from first to fifth at the drop of a hat.
• Unfortunately, catching back up once you've fallen behind is much harder than simply maintaining a lead. Without using a ranged attack weapon, it's next to impossible.
• It's very difficult to tell if a curb is low enough to drive up onto - the car's momentum doesn't seem to carry it over some slight humps we'd normally assume it'd be able to jump.
• Landing jumps sometimes causes you to spin out for no discernable reason
• Even on the first level, the computer cars never spin out on turns, which is annoyingly easy to do
• The cars are not yet balanced (that will come later in development)
• It's often unclear which path to follow on some of the more complex levels